I started this blog nearly eight years ago, never planning to continue posting after our adoption journey was over (seven years ago!) Now it’s been almost two full years since my last update, during which time I’ve often debated about posting again, or closing up shop altogether. Obviously I never did either.
I enjoyed my periodic blogging, so what happened? The biggest issue is that teenagers are less willing than little kids to be the subjects of your adoring ridicule. (
Crazy, right? Although all three teens love to read my stories from when they were young.) Also, Ethan went to college. Which of course we knew was coming, but it still smacks you in the gut after all the accolades and hoopla of graduation are done and your kid leaves home. It kind of took the wind out of my writing sails, so to speak.
Everything about Ethan’s transition to college has been positive – for him. But there’s no joy for Randy or me about him being away from home nine months of the year (and before long it will be permanent, I know.) We simply miss him. Now Abby is on the verge of leaving, too. And then the younger girls will leave. I know it’s what’s supposed to happen, but how I dread it. (And how quickly I became my grandma, sitting back and feeling misty-eyed over the friendly dinner table banter between the kids at Thanksgiving:
They’re all home!)
Besides turning you sentimental, having college-age kids also cements the fact that you’re no spring chicken (as my grandma might’ve put it). For Randy and me, the sadness at Ethan’s empty bedroom and empty place at the dinner table were accompanied by a hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-mallet revelation: apparently we were not as young as we’d thought. I pondered the surprise of my aging often the first few months of Ethan’s college career. Of course, I knew in
numbers how old I was. But prior to Ethan’s leaving for college, I had (somehow) managed to feel like I’d just been a college student myself a few years ago. Maybe like eight years ago. Ten, max.
Wasn’t I just bartending? Not that I felt physically like I still had the energy, brains or weight from my twenties – lord no! But college just didn’t seem like that many years ago. But then it was. (Conveniently, around the same time Ethan left home, my middle-aged farsightedness really kicked in. Nothing screams
aging like having to hold your phone at arm’s length to see the screen.)
Enough on aging and the shrinking nest and back to why I returned to this blog: I was reading through old e-mails I’d sent to my family when the kids were little, and some of them made me laugh. I want those memories to be accessible and become part of the other stories captured here, even though they won’t be chronological.
Maybe there will be future posts...? Just tonight, I offered to sew up a hole in a pair of leggings belonging to a certain teenage daughter. She informed me that it really wasn’t necessary: she’s been using a black Sharpie to color her leg where the hole is for weeks, so no one notices it. (So yes, even the teenagers continue to provide material. So we’ll see.)
For now: my kids, a few more of your stories, posted here for you:
E-mail excerpts
